NRC, activists to meet on San Onofre in Maryland

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has scheduled a public meeting for Jan. 11 with the environmental group Friends of the Earth to discuss one of the group's contentions about the San Onofre nuclear power plant.

The meeting, to be held in Rockville, Md., is meant to allow the group to address the NRC's Petition Review Board. The group has contended that plant operator Southern California Edison should have obtained a license amendment before replacing four steam generators in a $670 million operation from 2009 to early 2011.

The steam generators, two for each reactor, were later shown to be defective; both reactors have been shut down since January.

One reactor unit was offline for routine maintenance when the other developed a leak in one of thousands of steam-generator tubes, releasing a small amount of radioactive gas Jan. 31. Inspections showed unexpected tube wear in both reactor units' steam generators, with the most extensive wear in Unit 3.

After the NRC determined that the unexpected wear was caused by excessive vibrations among the steam-generator tubes, traced to design flaws, Edison requested permission from NRC to restart the Unit 2 reactor at 70 percent power. That is expected to eliminate the troublesome vibrations.

Friends of the Earth has asked that a formal hearing be held in connection with the restart request and, separately, has also requested a hearing on the license amendment issue. A separate NRC panel is considering the hearing request related to the restart proposal.

Also Thursday, the environmental group said in a statement that the restart plan could trigger a license amendment proceeding for a different reason.

A request for more information on the plan, made by NRC to Edison this week, included questions about whether Unit 2 could operate at full power, despite the fact that Edison proposes operating the reactor at lower power.

An inability to operate at full power might represent a significant enough technical change to trigger a hearing, the environmental group's statement said.

An NRC spokesman declined to comment Thursday on the group's statement.